China’s Heritage through History

"The sheer scale, depth and richness of China’s past certainly provides a seemingly endless resource for writing histories. However, China’s myriad regional diversities, sometimes astounding temporal continuities and discontinuities, together with the complex and, often, pragmatic relations between state and localities, also provide potent ammunition. Through an exploration of how China’s past is deployed in the present, Yujie Zhu’s China’s Heritage through History, critically examines the process of how a sense of ‘pastness’ is narrated, circulated and used in the present. Connecting everyday practices and the local stories of community life to a rapidly expanding tourist industry and a self-consciously global aspiration for a specifically ‘Chinese Heritage’ to be recognised, Zhu’s study develops an insightful critical examination that weaves a conversation between recent research in ‘critical heritage studies’ and non-Anglophone heritage perspectives. Taking a longue durée approach, the book explores the epistemological biography of heritage in China and, crucially, reflects on its future-making prospective as reconfigured pasts are used to forge a purposeful legacy for generations to come." ~ David C Harvey, Aarhus University.

"Yujie Zhu’s book is an original study of the social practices developed over centuries to transmit China’s cultural heritage to later generations. His long-term perspective makes this study a strikingly original account of the Chinese arts of memory and the people who have preserved and protected it." ~ Jay Winter, Yale University.

"It is important that heritage debates are informed by cases and perspectives from around the globe, and from different time periods. This book makes a welcome contribution by bringing together fascinating examples that show how the past has been addressed in China over the centuries and until today." ~ Sharon Macdonald, Humboldt University of Berlin.